Trip to Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic in the Caribbean via Miami, Florida, USA

 Ever since my first trip to the Dominican Republic almost ten years ago, I have been meaning to go back and visit the rest of the island that I missed on my first visit.

 I almost got to visit it during my round the world tour in 2008 but of course things went a little off course once I reached Mexico and loved it all so much that I wanted to stay much longer than originally planned.

 So with my old boss offering my back a few months of serious work, and not having taken a proper overseas holiday in over two years I decided that enough was enough and so I agreed to the work and resolved to save up all my pennies and booked a two week stay over in various cities throughout the island.

 With it being both the capital city and major international airport hub for the island, my first official destination was Santo Domingo, but as luck would have it the flights that I booked required a change of planes and layover in Charlotte and Miami, Florida USA.

 Having never actually been to Miami, but having seen lots about it on various TV shows, I was keen to add a half day trip to my original plan on the outward journey but as it turned out this was actually a waste of time and it would have been much better to have simply brought with me a sleeping bag and found a quiet corner of the airport in which to rest up over night.

 But before I even got to leave the UK I had to check in and go through security at London Heathrow, a feat that should have posed my no real problem except that my airline has subbed out my seat to a different carrier and I had forgot that even if you are just passing through the U.S.A.  you still need a recent electronic visa waiver, which of course I hadn’t realised I needed and thus didn’t have.

 Thankfully though, experience had taught me to always arrive at an airport several hours early, and to travel as light as possible, and so it was but a few minutes effort to use my mobile phone’s internet facility to find the right place to pay online for a US visa waiver and then I was allowed to board the flight, made even easier by the fact that the flight was delayed by over an hour.

 The flight over was nothing special, with me spending the bulk of the time either sleep or watching repeats of marvel super hero movies, and it was only when I arrived in Charlotte that things began to take a turn for the worst as although all my paperwork was in order the immigration guard at my passport check point clearly didn’t like my face, and so he insisted he marked my form with a huge red cross which meant that I had to go through a complete secondary safety screening process – again even though I clearly had an onward flight that was already minutes from boarding due to the delay of our inbound flight.

 Being the only person singled out by the vindictive security guard, and being unable to pass through the priority fastlane on the outbound security check meant that once I made it to my gate with my hand luggage they had already closed the flight for boarding.

 Thankfully I must have looked very pathetic indeed, as the check in lady called direct to the captain and had a flight attendant open up again just for me, but one of the downsides with arriving this late meant that all the overhead luggage space had already been taken and so I needed to have my hand luggage placed deep in the bowels of the plane, despite having had to earlier dump a load of cosmetic bottles because I was over the carry on limit.

 Touchdown in Miami was a bit smoother, and with it being nearly 6pm meant that I felt sure I had a few hours of night to kill and so shared a taxi shuttle to downtown Miami in order to get to my overnight hotel.

 Underwhelmed is the word I would choose to describe my stay in Miami.

 Desire being in Downtown Miami, the hotel was a complete dump and massively overpriced regardless of the fact that it was a budget hotel.

 I have been in better looking broom closets, and nothing seemed to work whether it was the air conditioning, the television, the WiFi or the elevator.

 All the interior windows had metal mesh imbedded in them and with the gloomy layout and décor I could not over the fact that it felt like it was a converted police station that instead of being renovated just had all the wanted posters taken down.

 As part of my research for Miami I had spotted that the beach wasn’t too far away from my downtown hotel but also that there seemed to be quite a lot going on around the airport.

 What I failed to spot was that the airports metro train station was not part of the main building but connected to the visitor’s car park and car hire centre which was about 10 minutes away from the actual airport and surrounded by nothing except motor ways.

 With it being already dark at 6pm, too dark to visit and enjoy the beach for its own sake, I felt that I could either go for a walk to see what mischief I could get into or take a taxi to the beach front and take in a meal, a show or a movie.

 Sadly for me I chose option a, to go for a walk, and I soon discovered that going for a walk in Miami was a lot harder than it sounded.

 After wandering around for half an hour getting more and more lost, and not seeing anything that really grabbed my attention as being a place I wanted to go into, I found myself at a metro stop and so I thought I may as well take a metro back to the airport to at least practice my route for the morning.

 Big mistake.

 Arriving at the airport car park I completely missed the tiny sign telling me that the airport was another short overhead train shuttle away and so felt sure that if I would have to find it on foot.

 After almost two hours of walking in circles playing frogger with the Miami traffic and seeing nothing except dingy motels and the occasional sex shop I ended up back where I started, more confused than ever, but also with tired feet in need of a rest.

 I took a metro back to near where my hotel was and proceeded to get lost a third time in one night before staggering back into my hotel room, very tired, aching and regretting that my picket sized hotel room had only a shower but no bath tub.

 Waking up with a headache and hating every minute I was staying in Miami meant that I had zero desire to go and try out the beach early next morning, but instead I ignored the hotels dismal breakfast offering and just walked to the metro station and took myself off to the airport.

 By the time I had boarded my flight for the Dominican Republic I could have been mistaken for thinking that I was already there, as the place was more broken down and dismal than I would every have imagined and everyone I met spoke Spanish as their first language.

 The flight from Miami to Santo Domingo was a short one and I during the journey I temporarily befriended the passenger who sat next to me on the flight, a lovely larger than life American who had Dominican routes and was going to see where her family came from for her first time.

 It was a bit weird for me to give advice about the Dominican Republic to someone who hailed from there originally, but it was also nice and gave me a chance to practice a bit of my tour guide spiel.

 Sadly she was not paying enough attention to me, and so when we got to the security desk and I flashed my internet pre-bought tourist visa card she didn’t have one and had to go back to an earlier booth and purchase one for $10 before rejoining the queue.

 Our meeting ended a fraction earlier than anticipated when her friend who was going to be doing the driving for her arrived with two other friends, thus taking up all four spaces in the hire car, and thus I said farewell to my single service friend and took the first of many overpriced taxi fares and made my way to my hotel in the Colonial Zone.

 The location of my hotel was ideal for reaching the nearby shops, but for some reason many of the roads around the Colonial zone are one way and so it felt like my driver was driving round in ever decreasing circles before we finally made it to the hotel.

 Indeed the only reason why I feel that this was not a ploy to extort extra money from me was that fact that it was a standard fixed fare for anywhere in the zone and so with all this extra driving he was burning his fuel but not my cash.

 My hotel was cheap and quaint, and fairly well decorated but regrettably it was one of a handful of internal rooms that had no windows and the air conditioning unit was not working, only an overhead fan swirling stale warm air around the room.

 The heat of this climate and this enclosed room was far too much for me, and I spent most of the first night taking cold showers and then lying on my bed naked with the fan blowing cold air over me.

 Of course this was a mistake, and after the already dodgy air conditioning unit back in the Miami hotel, mixed with airplane air conditioning, so by the end of thefirst night I was feeling a little shaky and when I woke up the next morning I had already developed a chest infection that would stay with me for several months.

 As part of my planning for my trip here I had done my fair share of research, and managed to pick out a few semi decent hotels throughout the country with which I planned on staying at each for a few days as I travelAs part of my planning for my trip here I had done my fair share of research, and managed to pick out a few semi decent hotels throughout the country with which I planned on staying at each for a few days as I travelled around.

 I also still had contact with a couple of my old penpals who lived or were born here, but you can never have too many friends or friendly faces in a strange country and so a few weeks before I flew out I made a few new contacts up and down the country in the hope that I would never need to be alone for too long if I didn’t want to be.

 As it turned out I actually overdid this a touch and so there were a couple of people who I had made tentative plans to meet but as my holiday unfolded I had to regrettably skip out of meeting altogether.

 I will not relate every little detail of the next two weeks, it would be far too long and boring, but I will try and touch on a couple of the highlights of each city which I can probably do in a couple of pages.

 In the Colonial Zone of Santo Domingo I met up with a friend on my first morning there and we spent a lovely half day walking around a couple of large shopping malls, complete with taking a handful of Gua Gua.

 A Gua Gua is what the locals call a bus but is actually more like an old battered and beaten up old taxi, where the driver instead of taking on one passenger from point A to point B will drive in circuit or directional flow of traffic.

 The reason why the locals term them more like buses than standard taxi’s is that a Gua Gua will also make numerous stops, both collecting or depositing numerous passengers at will and will often have as many as six full adult passengers squeezed together like sardines at one time.

 I have no idea of the actual fare structure of a Gua Gua, though it was always in the pennies rather than pounds price bracket, but the way to attract one is to either wait to be propositioned by a driver standing idly by the side of the road or just as frequently wait for a passing driver to spot you and click his fingers his into the air out the side of the window.

 The malls, being the focus of money and finance, were often the best looking building for miles around and I could only puzzle at how any of the locals could afford to shop there, seeing as the local salary was so low and the prices here so high.

  But spend the little money they earn they do and especially in the food court which had all the usual fast food franchises.

 My friend picked out for us a rather dingy looking barbeque rib joint, dingy because the rear of the place had no lighting on, but thankfully we could order and eat our meals in the main halls seating area and they served up the biggest portion of meat I have ever seen on one plate.

 It was truly gargantuan and a single plateful could easily serve two, or a family of four if they don’t like their kids all that much.

 As it was I fought bravely and scoffed as much of the super delicious grub as I could, but in the end it was just too much even for my appetite, and so along with a tip the rest got left.

 After our meal and a trip to a couple of shops looking for shoes we took another Gua Gua back to my hotel where my friend and I said our fond farewells and hoped that perhaps if time allowed we would meet up again before she left for home.

 As this was still barely early evening, and I was certainly in no need of sleep for many hours yet I contacted another friend and asked if they wanted to meet up tonight, and was very pleased that they said yes.

 This friend was actually the cousin of one of my old friends from the Dominican Republic, and as luck would have it once I confirmed that I was free tonight she managed to get her cousin to meet up with me as well so it was going to be a full house.

 My friends place was at the edge of the city, but with it being an evening trip and a night time return trip I decided against attempting to take a Gua Gua and instead used the friendly private taxi driver whose business cards could be found both at reception and in my room.

 The benefit of a private taxi would be that for a modest charge he would drop you off where you wanted to go and either after a certain amount of hours or at a given time he would arrive once more to take you back to the hotel.

 It was a nice touch of mini luxury, and I did not mind the slight extra cost as I knew I would not be sharing it with anyone else and furthermore that with my friendly driver eagerly anticipating a double fare it was very unlikely that I would end up stranded anywhere at the end of the night and not be able to get back to my hotel.

 My friends place was an unexpected treat in the middle of an otherwise rough looking area, and her style of interior decorating and furniture was top notch.

 I felt that I had suddenly been transported into a boudoir hotel instead of just visiting a friends place, and when she cooked us all a huge fish with potatoes and vegetables I was in hogs heaven.

 To end the night my friends were not done and seemed incredibly keen to go to a nearby bar and a have a few drinks.

 The bar ended up being a place not all that far away, but apparently walking the streets is not a safe thing to do, but much like in Mexico, handing your keys off to a guy who was standing as both a car park security and parking maid was considered perfectly normal.

 A part of me wonders if car thieves in Latin America are treated with the same contempt and death sentence punishments when caught that horse rustler’s face during the heady days of the great Wild West.

 The drinks were affordable, the place was hopping with locals of both sexes and apart from the music being loud enough to wake the dead it seemed a great place to relax and unwind.

 The local latin ladies were all out in force shaking their booty for all they are worth, and judging from the way that the local guys were being drinks and getting phone numbers left and right, it appeared that this was more like a nightclub than a bar.

 We stayed for a couple of drinks but the volume was a bit too loud for our liking and so unless we all agreed on getting shit faced as quickly as possible there was no chance I was going to risk being the only white guy attempting to dance in a latin bar, and so we collected the car and drove back to my friends place.

 Once back in the land of the hearing enabled we said our goodbyes, and then just as predicted my friendly taxi driver was already patiently waiting outside to take me back to my hotel where my bed and yet another cold shower was calling me, a thrice daily occurrence in this heat.

 The next day was much more subdued and simple, as I wanted to have a day to myself to chill out and wander the local neighbourhood looking for food, souvenirs and perfect holiday photo opportunities.

 What I found was that my hotel was in a rather subdued area of the Colonial Zone, far away from any tour shops but there was a couple of restaurants and a surprising number of beauty salons that doubled up as massage parlours, but what they really are are nefarious tourist traps where the owners do everything they can to fleece anybody silly enough to allow themselves to be stopped by the street hawkers they plant all along the shopping high street.

 As I was unaware of all this as I was approached, and being a sucker for trying out massages in new cities that I have never been to, I allowed myself to be persuaded into trying as simple hour long massage with one of the girls standing idly by.

 The price agreed beforehand sounded reasonable and as I had it written down, plus only had with me enough money for that plus a tiny gratuity tip, I felt relaxed enough to go with the flow and let her start the massage.

 The con comes about halfway through the massage, and although I had never experienced anything like this before, the second it began I could tell right away and so began preparing myself for the inevitable confrontation long before the owner realised I was onto his game.

 The actual con was that half way through the hour my masseuse escorted me back into the main part of the salon, where miraculously a team of about 8 pretty young females appeared out of nowhere and pounced on me the second after I sat down in the waiting chair provided for me.

 In moment they team began to give me a full body beauty treatment, with a manicure, a pedicure, a colour dying my roots, a haircut and a shave, all without hesitation but more importantly all without my request, permission or approval.

 Then at the end of the hour the owner invited me into his back office and presented me with a bill for all the services I have been subjected to.

 Now some might try to argue that as I didn’t loudly protest or physically prevent them from giving me a full treatment that I was probably on shaky ground to try and refuse payment for any extra services received, but this argument falls flat when I add that during my treatment I had had plenty of time to look around and spot a full list of services clearly on display in the salons window, and the bill I was being presented for totalled more than double everything on the list, a list which included both a half hour and a full hours massage.

 So realising that I was being charged massively way over the odds I felt no desire to play fair with this particular con artist.

 I took out the little money I had that would cover the price of the massage, thrust a now empty wallet right in his face, threw the cash on the floor and then as I barged past him I declared in a loud voice that he could call the police for all I cared but I was not going to pay him another pesos, let alone the 600 dollars his bill converted to.

 Of course he tried to bluster, to haggle and to call out to me, but I was both out of immediately available cash and righteously angry by then and I presume he has applied this con enough times to realise that in this case he was never going to convince me to go to a cashpoint and withdraw extra money just to hand it over to him, so he had little choice but let me go.

 As it turned out this was the right thing to do, as a few days later I found out during my online review of the hotel that many of the guests who had stayed there thought that the immediate area around it was very rough and more than one was angered by getting collared into paying hundreds of dollars for similarly unrequested treatments.

 Rather than be too sympathetic, my view was that I was angry that anyone, tourist or otherwise, would fall for such an obvious trick, as the more the con men get away with it the more likely they are to try it again in the future.

 However other than this, a trip to a nearby Dominos Pizza and recording myself dancing in the rain, it was a pretty quiet day and I just concentrated on researching my next destination and trying to escape the enclosed heat of my room by hiding out in the outdoor smokers garden area as much as possible.

 My next day was the start of a few days in the city of Puerta Plata, a fairly sizeable city for the island on its North coast and popular for its water activities and the fact that it is very close to its own international airport.

 The journey from south to north Dominincan Republic can be made by many routes, the most expensive being a private hotel taxi which will set you back a cool 350 dollars, and the most inexpensive by far is the very comfortable intercity coaches that leave every 30 minutes at around 5 dollars.

 Indeed it cost almost as much for a five minute standard taxi journey to take me from my hotel in the centre of the colonial zone to the coach depot at the edge of the zone than it did for the 4 hour ride to reach Puerta Plata.

 Without any friends in Puerta Plata to meet, the next few days were always planned as just a chance to rest, relax and enjoy the sun, sand and sea that we don’t really have in the UK.

 Thus it was that I had booked into a hotel was barely three minutes away from Costambar Beach, and with its own private pool, tour desk and American style restaurant I knew that for the next few days I could do as little or as much as I liked and really just go with the flow.

 Of the various tours I partook in, I enjoyed the snorkelling and the catamaran cruise the most, followed by the half day horse riding and zip lining, then the guided teleferico trip up a nearby mountain less due to the view being totally obscured by clouds and the very deliberately mis-advertised 12 waterfalls the least.

 I had never been zip lining before, but I found that once I tested out and could trust the gear and the wires I could enjoy it more than I thought, despite being slightly afraid of heights.

 I have now tried snorkelling a number of times, and each time I am getting better and more relaxed in the water, plus I now know how to keep myself from dehydrating and drying my mouth out during a swim which makes a small but noticeable difference.

 I am personally coming round to the idea that teleferico rides are highly overrated as they almost always end up so high up a mountain that regardless of how clear and perfect the weather may be at ground level, by the time you climb to those kinds of altitudes you seem virtually guaranteed to hit clouds and thus are able to see little more than a few feet in front of your face.

 Now this in itself is nothing all that surprising, but I will include here a little more about it purely because of the people I met and how it ended.

 It started with my the organised tour being nothing more than my hotel calling up a local taxi driver to take me on a return journey to the base of the teleferico station.

 Then I was met by an English speaking tour guide who collared me the moment I was out of the taxi and because he reliably informed me that the teleferico company do not have their own tour operators I felt almost obliged to be in his party.

 A party of one it turned out, as the two Russian ladies who he was standing beside him had actually turned him down moments before I arrived.

 So anyway, we go up the teleferico and take turns in photographing each other and then at the top the two ladies go one way and the tour guide leads me another.

 As previously hinted, the cloud cover at the top of the mountain was such that all panoramic views had been obscured halfway up and at the top we could barely see each other let alone the vast surrounding countryside.

 After saying very pointless things like, and down there is your hotel, my guide switched tact and started pointing at all the local plants and informing me all about them.

 It would have been much more impressive if my mother did not have most of them already in her own back garden, and in the end I was telling him as much about the UK as he was about the Caribbean.

 Towards the end of our walk through the mist I spotted the two Russian ladies again and we shared a coffee and a chat in the restaurant at the top, put there solely for hungry tourists who had not thought to bring a packed lunch with them, which might have explained the higher than average prices.

 After waving goodbye to the ladies I walked back to the top of the teleferico with my guide in tow and with a bunch of super-sized American tourists we shared the cable car lift back down to the base.

 At the bottom my guide hinted at wanting a tip, and feeling that it was all a waste of time I tried to palm him off by saying that I didn’t have any cash with me, to which he replied not to worry I can give it to the driver to give to him.

 I thought this sounded half reasonable, when I noticed that he hopped on his little scooter and was contemplating following us in order to get his tip, and knowing that I wasn’t going to be giving him a huge tip I thought it would be unfair to let him ride all the way back to my hotel for as little as 5 dollars.

 For note the entire teleferico ride only cost 3 dollars, and I was only giving him anything at all our of pity, when I would have much preferred to have just spent the entire time with the two Russian ladies and to hell with a professional guide.

 So before we drove away I routed through my wallet and ignoring the 10, 20, 50 and 100 pesos note I plucked my last 200 note from my wallet and handed it over to him, however instead of being grateful for the charity I was offering him considering his tour had been a washout he just stood there looking at it and said, “this isn’t a very big tip!”.

 Why on earth he felt that he deserved a big tip was beyond me, but as I was already in the taxi I just left the note hang in the air until he realised I was not about to go back into my wallet for anything bigger and then he finally took it.

 Considering the average daily wage of something from the Dominican Republic was less than 3 dollars I felt quite miffed that my generosity was snubbed like that, and I made sure that when I got back to the hotel I politely informed the manager that the ride was not only a waste of time but to warn other guests not to bother with the guided tour.

 Also as complete chance would dictate, a few days later when I was heading back down south from Puerta Plata I found that I was sitting next to the two Russian ladies that I had met on the mountain, and as it is a very long coach journey we were firm friends by the time we all arrived at the other end.

 We have added each other on facebook and have promised to keep in touch with each other from time to time.

 But my all time least favourite trip was the waterfalls experience.

 Viewing the natural waterfalls were the obvious exception to an otherwise good time, and it was completely due to their inability to provide sufficient information to the hotels and tour companies that advertise and sell the trip to tourists.

 The trip was described as being a walk through the forest to see 12 natural waterfalls, and myself being a lover of both a great waterfalls and great photo opportunities I jumped at the chance to see them, but although there were 12 waterfalls and you could take photos, this was no leisurely walk through the forest but an extreme natural waterfall slide experience where at the beginning you are requested to slip on a life jacket and waterproof crocs and then follow a guide to the first of several plunges.

 Now, if that was how it was being advertised at then I would have been very happy, but at the same time I would have brought along a towel, a change of clothes and left my non water-proof camera back in my hotel, but as it was I had nothing to change into, nothing to protect my camera with, had not brought my wallet with me ( having paid for the entire trip in advance ) and did not wish to strip down almost naked and leave all my stuff with them and go off into the jungle.

 So, after many minutes of convincing them that I did not want to be given a life vest as all I wanted to do was to walk around the reserve and take photos of all the falls from a safe distance, I was split up from the rest of the group who went one way and had my own guide take me round the other way.

 Or so I thought.

 What actually happened was we spend fifteen minutes hiking through the jungle to reach waterfall number twelve and then waited for well over an hour for the rest of the group to appear.

 Not that the park was all that big, but they were not viewing the water falls but actually riding down the miniature waterfalls like a waterpark amusement attraction and the delay was because they were spending ages ensuring that everyone was being photographed doing so.

 Adding insult to injury after about twenty minutes my guide said he was going to catch up with the others and find out what the delay was, and that I should just sit tight and wait for them.

 That’s right, for an hour I was left alone to sit on a toadstool at the edge of a small waterfall in the middle of a jungle, being eaten alive my mosquitos, while my tour guide left me to help the rest of the group take photos of each other getting wet.

 And the final insult, that again as we walked back to the small pickup truck that had brought us my guide, the same one who did nothing more than walk me into the jungle and then left me there as he was bored, strongly hinted that the salary he was being paid was not a large one and that he would appreciate any tip that I felt he deserved.

 Well I was far too polite to give him the tip I felt he fully deserved, so instead I just stormed back to the truck and sat there fuming while the others began to climb onboard and drip dry all around me.

 The snorkelling trips were much better, with a full complement of tourists packing out the catamarans cabin and top deck, and the spots where the crew took us to were breath taking in both their own beauty and for the fabulous array of fish and coral all around us.

 In typical developing Caribbean style the advertising was quite off target though as the advertised paradise island was no more than a 200 foot long sandbar, the expert divers were more interested in flirting with the female tourists than in our overall safety, and the food huts on paradise island were tied together with frayed rope and needed daily hammering to repair and replace lost boards, but as these were all very minor things to quibble over I put these down to Caribbean quaintness and just enjoying the sun and the snorkelling.

 After almost a week of relaxing on my own it was time to head back down south, back to Santo Domingo as during my time in Puerta Plata I had somehow managed to lose touch with my friend in Santiago de los Caballeros, and according to the internet it is a small city with not much to look at and all its internet advertised tours actually took place in either Puerta Plata or Santo Domingo anyway, thus not worth staying in for its own reason.

 Luckily I was able to call ahead and another friend from Santo Domingo who I had not yet met up with said that she was free all week and so could meet up a few days earlier if I so wished.

 Well, I had had enough of adventure activities, demanding tour guides and rustic charm, so a couple of days in a luxury hotel followed by a couple more in a relaxing all inclusive beach resort near the airport sounded like pure heaven.

 Slightly disappointing for me was that by the time I arrived back in Santo Domingo my slightly cough had developed into quite a heavy chest infection, and so one of the first things that I asked my friend to help me with was to find a chemist and get some medicine.

 For two days me and my friend stayed in the Marriott courtyard hotel, which may have been a five star business hotel to them, but to me it was a very over inflated hotel with a rubbish restaurant, bad view and porters who gave me such dirty looks throughout my stay that I wasn’t sure if they objected to me being friends with a local or if they thought I had hired myself a young hooker to take advantage of for the duration of my stay.

 Whatever it was it didn’t seem to bother my friend at all, but I felt decidedly uncomfortable with their constant dagger looks.

 The next three days were much better as we left behind the city and made our way out to the beach resort in the nearby Juan Dolio, and once again the journey was worth a brief mention.

 To start with, as we were leaving the Marriott we had to check out and ahead of us at reception were a couple of slim, pretty young American tourists, both coming from rich parents if their large suitcases were anything to go by, and didn’t speak a word of Spanish.

 But what really made me laugh was that after spending the night here in a luxury five star hotel they thought it would be a clever idea to try and save a few bucks by catching a bus into the centre of town to meet a friend.

 Of course they had no idea that a bus was actually a Gua Gua, nor how to find one, but on overhearing the receptionist inform them to go and stand on the opposite side of the road and hold their thumb out in the direction they wanted to go, along with their two large suitcases, I could just tell that it was an incredibly bad idea and yet again felt that some people were just too ignorant to go travelling by themselves.

 The other part of the story was that after my friend failed dismally to get her favoured local taxi driver to take us all the way to Juan Dolio, and not wanting to subject us to risking a series of Gua Gua rides, we allowed the hotel to recommend a budget taxi driver to take us.

 Well it started off ok, although it was a longer journey than we expected and as well as having to pay the standard taxi fare for a journey I was also prompted to pay extra for the toll booths along the motorway, which although not much was still a bit cheeky in my book.

 Then what was more unexpected was that half way along the motorway the engine conked out due to lack of petrol, which also meant no air-conditioning.

 With my friend being super calm beside me in the taxi I couldn’t really flip out but I was more than a little miffed that a driver the hotel had organised had undertook a journey he must have known he didn’t have enough petrol for.

 With me also passing out due to the external heat plus all the clothes I had foolishly chosen to prefer wearing instead of repacking for what I assumed would be a simple taxi journey, my patience was wearing thin and so when I was also asked to pay a friendly passing motorcyclist to go to the nearest petrol station and bring us back some fuel in an old 2 litre cola bottle, I did so in growing desperation and annoyance.

 This annoyance reached its absolute peak after a further fifteen minutes when, despite virtually curb crawling the length of the road our hotel was meant to be on and asking every passer-by we came across, we had failed equally miserably in finding our given destination.

 So before I strangled both my friend and the driver in sheer frustration I began insisting in ever increasing tones until they both got the message that I was done being cooked in a metal car for the day and that I strongly suggest that we should stop at the next building that even remotely looked like a hotel or resort and attempt to stay there instead if at all possible.

 As it turned out the very next one we came across was a very nice middle of the range all inclusive hotel complex that catered for all sorts of guests, had everything you could hope for in such a resort including several different restaurants, in house nightclub, casino, several swimming pools and lovely great rooms with their own private balconies.

 Indeed the only two tiny things that could have been better was to have requested a room further away from the in house nightclub, as opposed to being directly above it as we ended up, and that the in house WiFi was free.

 However as it was affordable, and none of the staff so much as battered as eye lid at me checking in with my friend, thus it was head and shoulders better than any other hotel I had stayed in for a long time, certainly the best here in the Dominican Republic.

 The next couple of days were spent doing all the usual things, but mainly eating, drinking, lazing about in or by the main outdoor swimming pool and one trip to the casino which turned out to have more staff than clients and thus we barely stayed long enough to see what was happening, or rather what wasn’t, before we headed back out again.

 With just a couple of days left before a very early flight out again from Santo Domingo I decided that it might be wisest and cheaper if we spent our last two nights in the town of Boca Chica as it was a tourist area that would barely have been any closer to the airport if it had been situated adjacent to one the runways.

 With hindsight it may have been closer and cheaper, but in every other aspect it was totally the wrong option and there are very few things in my life that if I could go back and change I would be 100% positive that I would do so, but even as a bad learning experience I think that Boca Chica has nothing what so ever to offer anything to anyone.

 Well almost, as I soon found to my dismay, as the neighbouring room was being rented by two scruffy looking American stoners who did little else but smoke weed and call our for local girls to hook them up for a little something something, if you know what I mean.

 For a moment I thought that it would upset my friend, but when I mentioned it to her she simply shrugged and said that this was what Boca Chica was infamous for, and was why she gave me a funny / quizzical look when I first informed her that I had booked a hotel here in the first place.

 With both my increasingly persistent cough, the rain and Boca Chica having nothing really worth leaving the hotel for, it was by and large a quiet couple of days and nights where we did as little as possible until it came to the final night where we packed up and requested a taxi take us to the airport first thing in the morning.

 The morning of my flight back to the UK I said goodbye to my friend at the airport, enjoyed the first proper American style breakfast in the airport lounge while I waited for my check in and board, and then without much incident of note I touched down in London once more via Miami and Charlotte almost a full day later.